Quite.
I'm trying to actively avoid doing that tbh.
One issue is that is IS going to be a 'thing' whether people like it or not. Just because you don't talk or allow conversations about the elephant in the room doesn't stop the elephant being there. People know and yes I do think it matters. Its something worthy of respect without being forced on everyone else though and thats where its an issue for me.
What you here have is an 18 year old in that position - who potentially is being set up to make or point or may well demonstrate exactly the opposite to a lot of people. Its a hell of a lot to put on an 18 year old. Get it right and its huge. Get it wrong and its huge. I actually think people should be thinking about duty of care implications more.
Hallie's intro VT troubled me. It was in your face and confrontational in a way that the others aren't. Only the Tory Guy and Ultra Leftie seems to have anything similar and it wasn't quite like this in tone. I know its hammed up but this is also the way the series want to caricature them.
This is the text:
Hi I'm Hallie. I'm 18. I'm a youth worker, and repping South London. My mouth does get me into trouble sometimes because I have a habit of not thinking before speaking. People would say that I'm just a lovely person, but I can be a raging bitch on wheels at times. I bark at men when they catcall me because your acting like a dog, so you'll get treated like one. [barks]. Going into the Big Brother House, at such a young age, I just hope people don't treat me like a baby. Because if I'm being talked to like a child, I really won't like it. [flips a middle finger]. So check yourself before you wreck yourself.
The confrontational stuff here is a worry - some of which I won't go into here but I've talked about before on MN.
For me, I don't really want a repeat of BB5 which was the year of Fight Night. It ended up turning into the Nadia Show after that. Nadia's behaviour in that was dreadful but the producers did a lot of 'protecting' and then changing the rules to keep Nadia in and give a more favourable edit than for others to 'tell the right story'. It did a lot of good, but it was also a different time and the entire subject is a lot more heated now to say the least. If thats attempted, it may well backfire anyway. Also Nadia was 27 at the time, not 18 and it was still not an easy thing to do with the publicity coming out of the house. It all went south at a later point. For the 2010 ultimate series, Nadia complained to Ofcom about editing of an argument with Coolio but it when the footage was released it was found that Nadia's behaviour was actually much worse than the edit.
So you've already got this fairly confrontational 18 year old, in a pressure cooker environment with a whole political storm on the subject very much being topical and 'duty of care' issues within reality tv (and TV generally) being very topical too. And the extra publicity surrounding 'the return of BB' which hasn't been around for a number of years and was much loved. For me, I just feel, the temptation of the producers is going to be to do a favourable edit at the expense of others for a whole host of reasons.
And honestly, thats what really killed BB in the first place and I wonder how viewers will see it because there is this awareness and scrutiny going on and I'm not convinced they want to see this on BB. They know it happens but part of the BB thing is the exact oppose desire to see 'the real person' and traditionally viewers have switched off at overmanipulation.
Its kind of a massive groan for me for the whole series. . All this desire to be as diverse as possible, again isn't necessarily going to work. Viewers want to see great characters, and don't really care about that as long as they have good characters. I really hope they've balanced it well and aren't relied too heavily on the tick boxes for entertainment value. Whats interesting is how well the first series of Traitors has gone down for not having too many confrontational contestants and instead seeing more of people actually getting along - as well as the conflict related aspects of the game.
I dunno. It troubles me. I don't want to watch a game show with the potential for a total car crash. I just want to watch a game show.